I had a strange dream last night. I was sneaking into hospitals and taking a wheelchair, pretending that I needed it, then whipping it around the corridors. Almost hoping to get caught. I went into different hospitals in my dream and it felt like days passed. It felt so real. I knew I was doing something wrong, but I couldn’t stop. The thrill was more enticing than the risk of being caught. Eventually, I was stopped. Brought to the side of the hallway, spoken to in confidence, a nurse said to me, “You know they’re on to you right? They are gathering evidence of you walking in. They know you don’t need the wheelchair. We even have you clocked in at 44 miles per hour speeding around. You could really hurt someone. You need to leave those for people who actually need them. You have to stop.” I woke up and the shame of being caught felt palpable. It was 4am and I was still too tired to wake up completely, so I went back to sleep for a few hours. When I woke up around 7am I still couldn’t shake off the dream completely. When I dream something that makes me feel something deeply, I know it has an alternate meaning. That’s what is so fascinating to me about the brain. How does my unconscious mind play a movie for me that has hidden messages I search for when I wake up in the morning? It’s incredible and terrifying. After some Google searching oddly enough I found if you’re going fast in a wheelchair in your dream and you don’t need a wheelchair in waking life it means you need to seek assistance. Maybe for me it means I don’t know where to go or how to ask for help. It’s fitting for this dream to come up now after what happened yesterday. I ended up asking myself, “When was the last time I felt supported” while holding back tears watching my son’s performance.
By all accounts, yesterday started off seamlessly. I felt so confident in the fact that this dance performance was going to be as stress free as possible. We are veterans now, we know what we’re doing. My son has been dancing for 6 years and I’ve never had help with getting ready for a performance, the only difference in the past couple years is my son takes care of getting together his costumes and shoes. Just this year, I also decided that it was his responsibility to invite his dads side of the family, there’s no reason for me to be involved. His dads mom and her husband were going to come. His dad’s no longer around anymore. But despite the fact that those thoughts were crossing my mind yesterday, along with the thoughts of how I have no family to experience this with me, I still felt like I could pull off the stress of preparing for a performance with no issues. My son had an art lesson at 11am, I worked out beforehand. I calmly dropped him off, had time to prepare our lunches and write the check to the studio. I had to stop and get hairspray before the hour was up, and my son strolled out from the lesson stress free with plenty of time to arrive for rehearsal at 1 o’clock. We made it to the next town over, 15 minutes away, with 15 minutes to spare. We easily found our way where we needed to be in the Performing Arts Center. The rehearsal went smoothly and then it was time for lunch. We even had enough time to drive back home and sit at the kitchen table and talk while we ate our sandwiches. Something we rarely, if ever, do anymore. We left to go back to the Performing Arts Center right on time, and I was back sitting in the audience 25 minutes before the shows start time. I had a small smile on face with how smoothly things had gone, and then God laughed at me and I saw a text come through on my phone. “I dont have the right shirt for the first song,” That’s what I saw come through from my son. I panicked, stood up and nearly ran out of the auditorium. I was frantically texting him on the way out the door to go back home (for the third time in 3 hours) to grab the shirt I asked nearly 10 times if he had prior to leaving that morning. My fight or flight kicked in almost instantly, I was calculating the time table in my head. I would be late, but if he needed the shirt to go on stage they would need to delay the start of the performance anyways. If I took 3 minutes in the house I would arrive back at the performance approximately 3 minutes after the supposed start time of the show. I was sweating, but I was made for this type of chaos after all. I just haven’t felt this way in awhile. I called his Grandma first and asked her to save me a seat, I didn’t know how packed the auditorium would be. I tried to calm myself down but I could feel my anxiety rising into anger. I tried to push it down the best I could as I was racing through cars back to my house. I called my son next and asked him to explain what the shirt looked like. “It’s a deep red,” he said. “It’s in my laundry basket.” Easy enough I thought to myself. I got home and ran upstairs in the heels I never wear straight to his room. We were just joking that morning at how his closet looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I started comically throwing clothes behind my back as the dog paced behind me, but for the life of me I could not find anything red. There was an orange shirt, a red hoodie that I knew wasn’t what he was looking for. I called him back, this time 10x more frustrated. Of course he also had me on speaker phone. “I dont know exactly where it is” he said calmly. I said “Honey, it’s not here I’m sorry” in the calmest voice I could muster. It felt like a scream based on how I felt inside. The anxiety still rising. Frustrated and making a mess with no luck I let him know I was returning to the performance empty-handed. He texted me to let me know how sorry he was. I tried to stay calm, I told him I would make it back as soon as I could. To break a leg. That I was sorry I would miss the first song. Angry tears streamed hot down my cheeks as I wrote the words to him trying to be as calm as I could possibly be. “I can’t cry, I can’t cry, I can’t cry” I told myself out loud as I backed out of my driveway for the third time in the last few hours. As I drove I let out an angry, embarrassing, scream. Something I would only allow myself to witness. The makings of a temper tantrum of a 35 year old at the end of her rope mom of a teen. My eyes filled with tears again and I fanned my hand to my face. “I can’t cry, I can’t cry, I can’t cry.” I told myself there would be time to bawl my eyes out later. Alone, maybe in the bathroom. I let myself fantasize about the ugly cry I would be allowed to have once this was all over. I screamed again hoping no one could hear me outside of the confines of my vehicle. I had to let something out and unfortunately I had not used waterproof mascara. “This is why I have to do everything myself.” I said out loud. “This wouldn’t have happened if I just packed the costumes myself. I can’t rely on anyone for anything ever.” And this is when the truth came out. In that moment, a light bulb went on. I suppose you could say a breakthrough, an understanding of the root of the problem. In the grand scheme of things a missing shirt isn’t that big of a deal. Missing one dance isn’t the end of the world. There will be other performances. The real issue, the root problem, is that I have no one to call when something like this happens. I can’t ask someone to bring the shirt to us. Or even at the bare minimum call and say I’m a little stressed right now, this is what just happened. No one in my life really cares about these minor struggles of mine. And no one ever has. It feels like I’ve been a single mother all my life. I wonder what it would feel like to not feel like I have to always carry everything.
Miraculously, I made it back to the performance before it started. I found my son’s Grandma and her husband. Things have been a little awkward since her son (my son’s father) moved out of state randomly. But either way it was fine, they were cordial. I was sweating as I sat down. I texted my son that I made it. As I settled into my seat that heavy feeling of wanting to cry would come and go in waves. “When was the last time you felt supported?” The question popped into my mind. The response wasn’t instant, instead I didn’t have an answer, so the question continued to pop up throughout the next hour and a half. Although I enjoyed the performance, I breathed in the deep sense of feeling completely alone in a room full of people. This feeling washed over me. When was the last time I felt supported? Do I even know what being supported is supposed to mean?
The Girl Without A Face 